people often made about homosexuals. Perhaps it was Da Gama’s exaggerated maleness that revolted him.
“He’s quite a man, isn’t he?” Sarah Kelso said.
“That depends on how you look at it, sweetie.” Stratton lit a Turkish cigarette carefully, still keeping his gloves on. “Personally, I’m surprised to find he can walk on his hind legs. I thought the human race was supposed to have developed a little over the past half a million years.”
He was certainly right about one thing—Da Gama was an animal; a soulless, mindless brute, savagely cruel and utterly sadistic. Once he got a man down he would stamp him into the ground with as little compunction as any normal individual would crush an ant.
There was a restless gleam in Desforge’s eyes that didn’t look too healthy and he poured himself another large whisky and laughed shortly. “You know what they say? The bigger they are the harder they fall.”
“That kind of talk can be dangerous, Jack,” I said. “Let me give you a few facts. Da Gama never starts a fight, he always leaves that to the other man. That way he keeps out of gaol. But he certainly finishes them. He crippled a sailor in Godthaab in June and half-killed a reindeer hunter in this very bar last month.”
“What do you want me to do?” he demanded. “Genuflect?”
He didn’t get any further. The door opened and Arnie Fassberg came in, Ilana on his arm. She was wearing a rather nice fur coat which looked suspiciously like a real mink and she paused at the top of the stairs, her eyes searching the room till she found me. For a long moment she held my gaze, no expression on her face and then she slipped out of the fur coat and handed it to Arnie.
Underneath she was wearing that incredible dress of gold thread and tambour beading and it seemed to catch fire in the hazy light. The effect was all that she could have hoped and about the only thing in the room that didn’t stop dead in its tracks was the juke box.
She finally moved, coming down the steps and crossing towards us and voices rose excitedly on every side mingling with laughter—the wrong kind of laughter. I held my breath and waited for the roof to fall in on us.
NINE
D esforge lurched to his feet and opened his arms to her. “And behold, there was a woman of Babylon,” he declaimed.
During the hour or so that we’d already spent at the Fredericsmut he’d consumed about half the bottle of whisky he’d ordered from the bar. I think it was only then that I realised he must have been drinking for most of the day because it was the first time since I’d known him that he actually seemed the worse for liquor. His speech was slurred, his gestures slightly exaggerated and the hair falling untidily over his forehead combined with the iron-grey beard and magnificent physique stamped him as the sort of man to give a wide berth to even in a place like that.
Already people were looking our way and because of Desforge as much as Ilana. For a start just about everyoneknew him, which was hardly surprising after a hundred and eleven films, the majority of which had been dubbed into most world languages. Two-fisted Jack Desforge, hero of a thousand bar-room brawls who always came out on top—every man’s fantasy figure and constantly having to prove himself like some old time Western gunfighter, to any drunk with inflated ideas or the sailor on a pass who came across him in a bar and fancied his chances.
He introduced Ilana to the others and Arnie brought her a chair. Their reactions were interesting. Vogel gazed at her in frank admiration, the oldest message in the world in his eyes. Stratton was also highly impressed, but in a different way, dazzled, I suspected, as much by the golden image as anything else. Sarah Kelso managed the fixed half smile that most women seem to pull out of nowhere when faced with something they know they’re going to have difficulty in competing with. Her eyes did the sort of price job on the
“He’s quite a man, isn’t he?” Sarah Kelso said.
“That depends on how you look at it, sweetie.” Stratton lit a Turkish cigarette carefully, still keeping his gloves on. “Personally, I’m surprised to find he can walk on his hind legs. I thought the human race was supposed to have developed a little over the past half a million years.”
He was certainly right about one thing—Da Gama was an animal; a soulless, mindless brute, savagely cruel and utterly sadistic. Once he got a man down he would stamp him into the ground with as little compunction as any normal individual would crush an ant.
There was a restless gleam in Desforge’s eyes that didn’t look too healthy and he poured himself another large whisky and laughed shortly. “You know what they say? The bigger they are the harder they fall.”
“That kind of talk can be dangerous, Jack,” I said. “Let me give you a few facts. Da Gama never starts a fight, he always leaves that to the other man. That way he keeps out of gaol. But he certainly finishes them. He crippled a sailor in Godthaab in June and half-killed a reindeer hunter in this very bar last month.”
“What do you want me to do?” he demanded. “Genuflect?”
He didn’t get any further. The door opened and Arnie Fassberg came in, Ilana on his arm. She was wearing a rather nice fur coat which looked suspiciously like a real mink and she paused at the top of the stairs, her eyes searching the room till she found me. For a long moment she held my gaze, no expression on her face and then she slipped out of the fur coat and handed it to Arnie.
Underneath she was wearing that incredible dress of gold thread and tambour beading and it seemed to catch fire in the hazy light. The effect was all that she could have hoped and about the only thing in the room that didn’t stop dead in its tracks was the juke box.
She finally moved, coming down the steps and crossing towards us and voices rose excitedly on every side mingling with laughter—the wrong kind of laughter. I held my breath and waited for the roof to fall in on us.
NINE
D esforge lurched to his feet and opened his arms to her. “And behold, there was a woman of Babylon,” he declaimed.
During the hour or so that we’d already spent at the Fredericsmut he’d consumed about half the bottle of whisky he’d ordered from the bar. I think it was only then that I realised he must have been drinking for most of the day because it was the first time since I’d known him that he actually seemed the worse for liquor. His speech was slurred, his gestures slightly exaggerated and the hair falling untidily over his forehead combined with the iron-grey beard and magnificent physique stamped him as the sort of man to give a wide berth to even in a place like that.
Already people were looking our way and because of Desforge as much as Ilana. For a start just about everyoneknew him, which was hardly surprising after a hundred and eleven films, the majority of which had been dubbed into most world languages. Two-fisted Jack Desforge, hero of a thousand bar-room brawls who always came out on top—every man’s fantasy figure and constantly having to prove himself like some old time Western gunfighter, to any drunk with inflated ideas or the sailor on a pass who came across him in a bar and fancied his chances.
He introduced Ilana to the others and Arnie brought her a chair. Their reactions were interesting. Vogel gazed at her in frank admiration, the oldest message in the world in his eyes. Stratton was also highly impressed, but in a different way, dazzled, I suspected, as much by the golden image as anything else. Sarah Kelso managed the fixed half smile that most women seem to pull out of nowhere when faced with something they know they’re going to have difficulty in competing with. Her eyes did the sort of price job on the
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